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inkscape-extension-pathops

This is a fork of inx-pathops

Inkscape extension to apply a path operation multiple times to a selection of objects.

Basic Usage

This extension takes a selection of one or more groups, or of several elements (paths, shapes, text), or a mix of both, and applies a chosen path operation with the top-most valid object in paint order and each other valid object which is part of the selection (directly or as member of a processed group) that is lower in Z-order.

Objects which are considered "valid" for path operations:

  • paths
  • shapes
  • text

Other graphic elements like clones or bitmap images are silently ignored.

Operations

All operations work exactly like their counterparts in Inkscape's Path menu except for Trim which is an additional operator. Trim works like Difference except that it applies the operation on the entire stack of selected paths. This means it starts at the top and applies Difference on all the paths below it, then it goes from the top element to the second element and repeats the entire process.

Options

Max operations per run

Large selections with a high count of valid objects are supported by processing the path operations in chunks. The number of operations to be maximally applied per externally spawned command can be configured by the user. The current default is 500. Note that the actual limit (length of the list of arguments for external command) is OS-dependent and could be higher (Linux, OS X) or lower (probably on Windows).

Recurse into groups

Groups in the selection are handled transparently: the ids of the contained objects are collected and checked; unsupported object types (e.g. clones, or bitmap images) are silently dropped from the list. With default settings, the support for nested group levels is unlimited. It can optionally be reduced to 1 to process only the direct members of the top-level groups in the selection, without further recursion.

Keep top element when done

The top-most path by default is retained after the path operations, and can optionally be removed once all path operations are done.

Dry run

If checked, the extension processes the selection and returns information about object count, chunk size and the assembled argument lists for the external commands without actually executing them.

Shortcuts

The defaults for the individual PathOps extensions which don't show a dialog:

  • Max. operations per external command: 500
  • Recurse into groups
  • Keep top-most object
  • No dry-run

Installation

Copy the files in the src/ directory into the user extensions directory (see 'Inkscape Preferences > System' for the exact location) and relaunch Inkscape.

The extensions will be available as:

Extensions > Generate from Path:

  • PathOps Custom...

Extensions > Generate from Path > PathOps:

  • 1 Union
  • 2 Difference
  • 3 Intersection
  • 4 Exclusion
  • 5 Division
  • 6 Cut Path
  • 7 Combine
  • 8 Triim

Background

inx-pathops is a rewrite of an extension originally authored by Ryan Lerch (inkscape-extension-multiple-difference) and later expanded in a fork by Maren Hachmann (inkscape-extensions-multi-bool).

The rewrite started with the interest to improve overall performance:

  • Responsiveness
    Support for groups (one level, or unlimited nested levels) was implemented, which can reduce response times because a large number of elements can be passed from inkscape to the extension script with just the reference to the id(s) of one or several selected group(s).
    Additionally, a time-consuming method provided in a module shared by Inkscape to pre-process the objects in the selection has been identified and is overloaded with a faster method.
  • Z-sorted list of elements
    The Z-sorting of the selected elements to be processed is done internally in python (initially with zSort from pathmodifier, now rewritten as function that returns an iterator) instead of spawning a separate inkscape process to query all drawing content.
  • OSError: Argument list too long
    Applying the path operation on a huge number of elements creates a command with a long list of arguments to spawn a second inkscape process. This can hit OS-dependent limits and cause the extension to fail. inx-pathops splits the list of elements into smaller 'chunks' (based on a user-defined max count), and spawns a series of inkscape commands, one for each chunk.
  • Maintenance
    A single python script and several INX files are used to provide access to the supported path operations. inx-pathops offers a combined dialog with additional options, as well as a separate INX file for each path operation which allows direct application without a dialog (each can be assigned a custom keyboard shortcut if frequently used).

Source

The extension is developed and maintained in:
https://gitlab.com/su-v/inx-pathops

A ZIP archive of recent snapshot also be downloaded here:
https://gitlab.com/su-v/inx-pathops/tags

License

GPL-2+